


Smoke in the Wind

by eowynstwin



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Almost Kiss, F/M, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jealousy, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 12:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17345567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eowynstwin/pseuds/eowynstwin
Summary: Sole Survivor Lucy Armstrong tells the story of how she met her late husband Nate, and Danse tries to wrestle with his budding feelings for her (it doesn't work).





	Smoke in the Wind

Danse finds her sitting on the edge of the Prydwen’s deck, arms folded on the knee-high railing, ankles crossed and legs hanging in the open air as she takes a pull from a cigarette. It’s warm today, and Knight Lucy Armstrong is just one of many who’ve set themselves up on the outer deck of the Prydwen to enjoy the weather. There’s a light breeze; some documents stacked in a messy pile by her hip are being weighted down by a near-empty cola bottle. She doesn’t look up at him when he approaches, but her jaunty “Hey there, soldier, looking for me?” lets Danse know that she heard him coming. 

She’s in her Brotherhood uniform, but she’s pushed the top half of the suit down to her hips and tied the sleeves in a loose knot, letting the midday sun hit her freckled shoulders. It then occurs to Danse, as she exhales a thin stream of white through distractingly full lips, that he’s never seen her smoke before. 

“Paladin,” he corrects her, but it’s without any real irritation. She always keeps her casual insubordination–if he can even call it that in the first place–restricted to informal settings, and it doesn’t bother him much as long as she keeps following protocol in the field. 

Still, he’s curious about the cigarette. “New habit, Armstrong?" 

She finally looks his way; her pale grey eyes surprise him, as they always do no matter how many times he’s seen them, and he feels once again that odd lurch in his chest when they meet his. She regards him for a moment before patting the space of steel beside her, inviting him to sit down. He sits; the smell of tobacco reaches him as she takes another pull and exhales, the breeze pushing the smoke past his nose and away into the clear sky. 

"My late husband was a smoker when I first met him, did I ever tell you?” she says, and he hears the beginning of a story in her tone. She talks about her past often, he’s noticed, as if she’s trying to convince herself that it actually happened. 

If she could see herself through his eyes, he thinks she wouldn’t have to try so hard; she would see a woman with skin smoother, teeth whiter, and eyes clearer than they should be in the centuries-old ruins of a cleaner world. It sets her apart from the rest–it makes her glow in such a way that there is no doubt about the truth in her words.

“You didn’t,” he replies, but says no more–she’s already decided to tell him, he knows, and he doesn’t want to derail her. 

She takes one last pull from the cigarette and then crushes its smoldering end on the steel of the Prydwen’s deck. She’s still holding it between her index and middle fingers when she continues. “I was collaborating with a military defense attorney on Nate’s base while one of his fellow officers was undergoing a court martial. Nasty case, actually–Colonel Such-and-Such supposedly had been assaulted by Captain So-and-So, even though it was at most a drunken bar fight over whatever it was puffed up jarheads got angry about back then–but that’s, uh, beside the point." 

That in and of itself is a story Danse wants to hear, but he stays on topic. "You met your husband there?" 

She nods. "Mm-hm. The second week I was there, I got invited to play cards in the lounge while we took a break for lunch. The table was full and Nate was there–he was the first one to get up and offer me his seat. The game itself wasn’t anything special, just a bit of poker, although they were using M&M’s as chips. Are M&M’s still a thing now?”

Danse shakes his head. “Never heard of them.”

She scoffs, disappointed. “Shame. Anyway, I don’t think they were allowed to wager actual money on base, so that’s what they used. I honestly don’t know how an almost all-male group of young soldiers kept from eating their ‘chips’–” at that, she suddenly laughs. “Although, I probably would be able to tell you if I hadn’t been watching Nate for the entire game! He was so handsome, and he just _radiated_ charm. You ever met someone like that, soldier?" 

He has. His gaze follows her free hand as she tucks a lock of ginger behind her ear. The first time he met her, her hair was coiffed and styled like something from an old commonwealth magazine. Now all she does is comb it, but she still looks like she walked straight out of a picture, where war was only a concept.

"So the case dragged on, and I saw him around. He liked to tease me about my name–‘Anything new on the moon, Miss Armstrong?’ he’d ask. Most of the time it was when he was on a smoke break, too–we’d just sit next to each other and talk about anything and everything.” A melancholic smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “It wasn’t long before his bunkmates started teasing him about me. Soon after that he asked me out to dinner." 

Danse’ gut pinches–he grudgingly acknowledges that it feels like jealousy–but he asks, "Did you accept?" 

She gives him a conspiratorial grin, and the pinch almost goes away as she leans toward him. "I thought I was something clever. You see, I told him, ‘You can take me to a movie, you can take me out to dinner, and hell, you can even take me home–but Nathaniel Armstrong, you cannot kiss me with that smoker’s mouth.’" 

She’s inching even closer as she speaks–he can see the barest traces of old eye makeup, smell the shampoo in her hair and the lingering tobacco on her breath. His own breath leaves him. She’s close, much too close, and decorum, _propriety,_ demands that he move away, but he doesn’t want to, damn it. 

"What did he do?” Danse hears himself murmur. 

“He said to me, okay, that’s fine, and we went out.” Her expression turns fond, gaze focusing on something far away. “We went to this one restaurant I’d talked about, and it was…perfect. It was like we were sitting outside during his break, talking like we normally did. And when the evening ended, he took me home to my little apartment in town. We were at the front door, and we were so close together–I was just about to tell him I wasn’t serious, I wanted that good-night kiss, but he pulled away! It felt like getting punched in the stomach, I was so disappointed!”

Armstrong meets his gaze again. He doesn’t know what to say–he’s ridiculously, intensely envious of a dead man, but at the same time he wants to reach into the past and throttle Nate for passing that kiss up. Isn’t Danse himself thinking about how the soft curve of her jaw would fit in his palm? How thick her hair would feel as he ran his fingers through it? The soft brush of her lips on his, the warmth of her tongue–and the inevitable nose-bump that would break them up into laughter. How he’d dive back in, surprising her, and how they’d be figuring out how many ways they could kiss each other for a long while after.

If _Danse_ can imagine that right now, then there was no way Nate couldn’t have–or hadn’t been, for that matter. Danse would bet his last cap on it. So, for Nate to have that fantasy in his mind, for him to imagine it and not to kiss Lucy breathless when he had the chance…Danse can’t decide whether to admire the man’s self control, or question his intelligence.

He’s saved the necessity of trying to produce a response when Armstrong continues her story. 

“I finally got the results I needed from the prosecuting office the next morning, and that meant that my business on-base was finished. When I saw Nate that day, he was obviously unhappy–whether about the kiss that didn’t happen, or the date itself, I didn’t know at the time. I was awfully upset with myself, anyway. You don’t find something like what I had with Nate every day. And I thought I’d ruined it all because I wanted to make a joke." 

But she _hadn’t_ ruined it–she married him. She had a son with him. A son that she’s willing to tear up the commonwealth to find, that she holds above all else: above the Brotherhood, above the Minutemen, and certainly above the people she calls friends. Danse swallows, but he can’t look away.

He _needs_ to remember all this–her true loyalties, the real reason she’s even here with him now–but Lucy’s expression is soft, and the sun is bright in her gorgeous eyes, and he can’t blame himself for leaning even closer, for wanting some of the softness to be for him. "But you didn’t,” he says quietly. 

“But I didn’t.” Her smile returns. "A week later I went back on base to submit some final paperwork, and one of his friends pulled me aside and told me to go see him that very instant. So I found him–and he grabbed my hands and told me, 'Lucy, I haven’t had a cigarette since the night we went out, and I’ve been dying to kiss you every minute since.’" 

Danse’s heart is beating in his ears–she’s moving even closer, her breath warm against his mouth, her voice only just above a whisper, as she says "And so I kissed that man like it was saving my own life, soldier. And smokers always taste…a little bit like…like tobacco…" 

He can feel just barely her lips shaping the words against his as he cups her jaw, the strands of her hair soft between his fingers; her hand falls lightly on his knee. His eyes begin to slide shut– 

A strong burst of wind is followed by a clatter. They spring apart, Lucy catching her cola bottle–overturned by the papers catching the gust–and slapping her hand down on the pile before more can fly away. They’re staring surprised at each other for a half-second when a scribe comes around the corner, nose deep in what Danse suspects to be a document that Lucy–not Lucy, _Knight Armstrong_ –recovered; she’s so engrossed that she doesn’t even spare them a glance. 

Danse’s heart might as well be a pre-war engine at the pace it’s going. At his side, Armstrong is straightening out and gathering up the remains of her work. His already overworked heart leaps at the flush blazing across her cheeks. 

The passing scribe is soon out of earshot, and an historically awkward silence follows. The weather is suddenly much warmer.

"I apologize,” Danse finally murmurs, face hot, as they rise to stand. “I’m your superior. I should not have let that happen." 

"Don’t be ridiculous!” Armstrong replies with a clearly forced laugh. She pushes her hair back with one hand, but it just falls down around her jaw again–Danse has to clench his fist to keep from tucking it behind her ear. 

“Anyway,” she says, the tone of her voice unconvincingly breezy, “that’s why I’m smoking–right now, at least. I was thinking of him.” Her eyes widen. “Not entirely of him! Not when you–when we–” she clears her throat and gives her head a quick shake. “You know, I think I have a gun to polish, so, thanks for the ear, soldier–" 

And she makes her escape. He’s trying to steady himself, rubbing the back of his neck and wishing for another breeze to cool him off as he watches her leave. As she disappears through a door, he notices that the cigarette she’s already finished is still between her fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> So. This has been in my drafts for literal years–since a few months after Fallout 4 came out, in fact. I still like it though, and I FINALLY sat down and finished it. If you got this far, thank you for reading this VERY overdue labor of love.


End file.
